Devil Left Angel Right

I remember some things during my childhood/young adult years that taught me a lot about life. I learned a lot about love, forgiveness, putting others needs before your own, hard work, ethics, dedication, faithfulness, humility, pain, regret, heartache, depression, financial burden, anger, violence, etc. I learned each lesson. I learned to appreciate and hold dear the joy that was a result of the ones that are beautiful by default and I do my best to carry that to others. I also learned ways to protect myself from the results of the ones that weren’t so pretty and caused a good deal of pain. Walls. Keep them up. Keep out the bad, be really fucking careful about what you let in and make sure it’s actually good. Avoid conflict…at all costs (which was actually a VERY poor choice). Some of my defense mechanisms are not really so great, in all honesty – especially from a mental health perspective. I found myself in a situation today where I felt taken advantage of, abandoned, verbally abused, misunderstood, and so very much OVERWHELMED. I know I’m not the only one who deals with these things, but damn it, today was really fucking hard. I found myself reacting in my “typical” ways. First anger. Then tears. Then frustration. More tears. Then nope, I’ll beat this….I always do…Can’t fucking get to me….I’ll prove it…Go ahead and try one more time and see how hard you fall in your failure to break me down…along with the fact that one more person has been added to my list that will NEVER make me shed another tear again. I’m on a ledge here. I have devil/angel on the shoulder scenario and I’m trying really hard to find a “somewhere in the middle” and fair solution. There is the protected side of me that wants to say “fuck off” and the other side that says “Girl…take the high road”. I’m trying really hard to take the high road, but if I’m honest I really don’t WANT to. I want to fight back.